Legend: Hand of God is a broken mess

So many problems…

Legend: Hand of God had so much potential, but it was released way too early and is so buggy that I can’t recommend anyone buy it. Although it isn’t quite as bad off as Hellgate: London was upon its release, this game still has some glaring errors that should have been corrected before it was pushed to market.

This is another Diablo II or Titan Quest style game where you have an overhead view of a character and the gameplay is done entirely by clicking the heck out of your mouse. There’s no real strategy other than click-click-click as fast as you can. There really wasn’t anything about this game that made it stand out any different from Diablo II or Titan Quest, other than those two games weren’t nearly as buggy.

I thought this game really had a lot of potential, and that’s why I decided to check it out. I enjoy these type clicky-RPG’s because they are easy to jump into and usually take a while to complete. However, for every really good one like Diablo II or Titan Quest, you get two more crappy clones like Legend: Hand of God. I put two hours into this game before I simply decided to quit let it frustrating me. Maybe I’ll get back into it once a patch is released, but in the meantime I’m going to help spread the word about its problems. Why should you pay to be a beta tester for a commercial release? That’s basically what you’re doing if you buy this game.

So just how many problems are there in this game? Quite a few! For starters, it has major performance issues. I have an AMD x2 5000+ processor with 3 gigs of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS video card. It may not be the most top of the line system, but it can handle most games pretty well. With this game, the only way I can make it run semi-smoothly is if I turn all the graphic detail down. When I do this, it makes everything blurry with jagged edges and horrible to look at. I read on a few message boards where people with far superior systems than my own were having the same problems. It’s like only a few lucky people can make this game run smoothly.

Another problem is the mouse. There’s a huge amount of lag and nothing seems to correct it. Instead of a regular mouse pointer, you have a flying Tinkerbell-like fairy who talks annoyingly throughout the game. While this is a good idea to have a fairy instead of a pointer, especially because she can illuminate dark areas, the idea doesn’t work in execution. The fairy pointer drags around too slowly, thus making combat extra difficult. In fact, it makes the whole control system tedious, and that’s completely unacceptable when the entire game is controlled by the mouse.

Numerous graphical problems also plague this game. For example, you have no camera control over your overhead view, yet the levels are filled with trees and other tall objects that constantly block your vision of the ground. It’s not at all uncommon to walk under a tree and not be able to see anything. Heaven forbid some treasure gets dropped by a defeated monster there. It’s even worse when you are trying to use the horrible drag and drop inventory management system. I found it nearly impossible to look at the stats for whatever weapon I had equipped because I couldn’t even find the right magic spot for the fairy pointer to hover.

Worst of all, though, is the map. Most games like this give you a little window in the upper corner of the screen and it shows the map of where you’ve been. You can also hit a key to bring up a larger screen. It flat out does not work if you have the Shadow options in the graphics settings set to low. The problem is two-fold in that I have to turn down the shadows just to make it playable. With the Shadow detail set to low, it shows you as a little circle on the map, plus it shows red dots for enemies, but everything else is black. This makes exploration a total chore because you have to do a lot of backtracking just to figure out where you’ve been. I’d rather have no map at all than one that does not work.

Simply put, Legend: Hand of God is broken. I let it test my patience for a good two hours before I finally gave up on it. Don’t waste your money on this unfinished mess.